


The Ghosts of Dawn

by ThisDominionIsMine



Series: The Age of Silence [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Blow Jobs, Crossover, Derek is Boone, Drug Use, Emotional Constipation, Hand Jobs, Isaac is an ex-Fiend, M/M, Power Dynamics, excessive gore, near death experiences are far too commonplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:37:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mojave Wasteland likes to chew people up and spit them back out with their bodies intact and their souls rent to shreds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts of Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This was a plot bunny that never quite got the message that it was supposed to lie down and die. Funny how that happens.

 

Scott is bleeding from one gash on his bicep and another on his cheek – he’s fumbling for a Stimpak when Isaac sets a hand on his chest, shoves him against a rock shelf, and kisses him. It happens so fast, he’d call it a hallucination if not for how the press of Isaac’s mouth _lingers_ , and how Scott’s blood is smeared on his lips when he pulls away to grin. And clearly Scott got smacked with a serious dose of venom, because Isaac looks awfully pretty in his patched-together Fiend armor as he spins away to drive his unlit Shishkebab blade through a cazador’s thorax.

The remainder of the swarm buzzes furiously as they close in, for all that they’re going down with busted heads and shredded wings as the other wanderers open fire. Isaac slashes through one cazador’s wings, dropping it, slams his blade into another’s bulbous, multi-faceted eye as it descends on him, then snaps back around to skewer the first until it collapses entirely, limbs twitching. He’s panting, color high in his face as he wheels, searching for a new enemy – a wild thing with Scott’s blood on his mouth and insect guts all over the rest of him.

“Scott!” And that’s Stiles scrambling down the incline, carbine loose in his grip. “You alright, buddy?” Derek’s picking his way down with a tad more caution, red beret and sunglasses in place and immaculate as ever, and so is Lydia, with her shoulder-mounted machine gun balanced ever-so-carefully so she won’t tip over.

Scott pushes himself off the rocks and jabs the Stimpak into the vein of his forearm, breathing easier as the medicine knits his wounds together to leave only slender white lines. “I’m good,” he says, watching Isaac lick his lips.

***

The thing about Isaac is that he’s a paradox; a functioning train wreck; a former Fiend who spat in Death’s face one too many times, then nearly stumbled into its grasp down in the fighting pit of The Thorn, where a juvenile deathclaw tore open his ribcage. (He survived, he says, because life wasn’t done kicking his ass yet.) Scott tends to think he wouldn’t know fear if it bit his nose off, not after so many years spent running beside it. But he’s not dumb – knows how to watch the wasteland, how to find the weak points of everything from radscorpion shells to Brotherhood power armor – and he’s loyal.

Their group of travelers fragments and reforms constantly as Stiles forms alliances with Boyd and Erica from the Great Kahns, Danny from the Boomers, Jackson from the Brotherhood of Steel, as he bargains with Allison and Lydia and their caravan network, and as he does his delicate little dance to keep Peter Hale – Derek’s uncle six or seven times removed; Mr. Hale; de factor ruler of New Vegas – from learning whose side they’re really on. People come and go as they’re needed, as Stiles sends them out across the Mojave, or as they’re called back to their own factions, but Derek and Scott don’t leave Stiles, and Isaac doesn’t leave Scott.

He’s an asshole. He’s sadistic. He snaps and crackles and bleeds like it’s something he enjoys, but the beasties and the bad guys rarely have the luck to break past him to where Stiles and Scott are pumping off steady rounds from their rifles. Isaac is the scout – the first layer of defense – roving ahead and around, putting himself between Stiles and any sign of danger, because Scott’s told him a million times: Stiles is the brains of the operation; Stiles is in charge; Stiles is their most valuable asset, and they all might as well throw themselves at the mercy of a deathclaw matriarch if Stiles ever goes down.

And it’s not as if Scott lets him go alone – he and Stiles watched each other’s backs for years as couriers, eyes always peeled for trouble. If Isaac’s the scout, then Scott is at least the advance guard. He’s good with a rifle, better with a shotgun, best with a blade, but it feels as though he spends half his time just trying to keep track of Isaac, because god knows the idiot could have a dozen bullet holes in his chest and never think to scream for help. He _is_ an ex-Fiend, after all.

When they start going down into old Vaults in search of old tech, old plans, old hopes, Scott makes Isaac look him in the eye and swear to stay close. “We’re screwed without you,” he says, and Isaac flushes even as his mouth hooks up in a broken smile and he makes a crack about how much he doubts that.

He does stay in sight, though. Mostly.

And then they hit Vault 22 for Hildern, and there are regular plants plus plant zombies and animate plants that bite and sting and poison and rip apart chunks of flesh, plus spores in the air and horror stories in the databases, and then they get split up, and he finds Isaac cornered and bound down by once-human plants, spore carriers, and he’s bleeding all over, and Scott never wants to see anything bright green ever again, no plants, no nothing.

Isaac’s fine in the end – hacks himself free once Scott shoots the heads off two of the human-plant mutants. He brushes off the worst of the gooey plant slime coating his armor and blade, then yanks Scott in without preamble to steal the breath from his lungs and lick the bitter taste of fear from his mouth.

Scott nearly goes to his knees right then and there, covered in plant gore, but Stiles’ voice is calling them, softened by the greenery, but he’s calling, and they have to find that other scientist, so Isaac catches Scott’s bottom lip between his teeth and then lets go, grinning.

Because he _is_ a wild thing. Untamable as a mutagen gone out of control. A Fiend.

It’s dark by the time they blast and slash their way out of the Vault with Keely and her data safely in tow, and the only place more dangerous than the Mojave during the day is the Mojave at night. They settle down in the mouth of the small canyon, past where the green stops, and, god, but it’s reassuring to have his boots on barren dirt again.

No fires. Not so close to all those plants – to all green. Not where they might be seen. So they tear into gecko steaks that are cold and stiff as leather, but they fill a body up, and then they hunker down to sleep in their lighter layers of armor – all except Isaac, who takes first watch, eyes roaming the wasteland while his fingers work over his blade, cleaning and sharpening without looking down. Scott falls asleep trying to pick out the individual scars on Isaac’s knuckles and deciding if they came from fights, or from messing up his weapon’s care when he pulled stunts like this.

He startles awake with the chill sunk deep into his bones and Isaac settling down behind him, curling an arm around him, tucking their bodies together. The spikes and jagged portions of Isaac’s armor have been stripped off for the night, softening him. “Go back to sleep,” he breathes into the hollow space behind Scott’s ear, and Scott grunts, fits a hand over the one Isaac has splayed on his sternum before he complies.

***

They’re bouncing around, hanging onto the edges of life. Derek starts getting edgy when people try to talk to Stiles alone, and Scott can’t blame him – they’re becoming targets now.

They run afoul of the Legion in Nelson while rescuing captive NCR soldiers on a favor for Stiles’ father. Scott and Stiles wind up back-to-back in an alley between houses, surrounded. It’s a typical desperate scene from the old days until Derek ditches his sniper rifle and comes howling down off the hillside with a machete. Boyd and Erica aren’t far behind, clamoring for blood in the name of false promises, and together with Isaac they make short work of the Legionnaires.

Back at Camp Forlorn Hope that evening, Isaac follows Scott into his tent and watches as he starts peeling off sweat-stained armor. They’re both battered and sore, and Scott doesn’t have the energy for mind games. “You need something?” he asks, then yelps when Isaac knocks his knees out from under him and pins him to the cot.

“If I’m not allowed to go wandering off, you aren’t either,” he growls against Scott’s jaw, before biting at the corner of it.

Scott groans and bucks up against the hard line of a body that vanishes when Isaac rears back, eyes alight. Isaac doesn’t waste time, kisses him just once, all teeth and biting, then tracks his mouth down Scott’s body to swallow him without a moment’s hesitation.

Scott groans and gasps and claws at the loose twists of Isaac’s curls, caught between breathing and keeping quiet and _God, Isaac, God, you’re gonna kill me_ until words lose their meaning. He can hear himself half-sobbing in the dark, an attempt to reclaim some self-control staggering off-course when Isaac nicks him with his teeth – and it’s intentional, the little shit; Scott sees the laughing gleam in Isaac’s eyes, the way his lips roll back, just for a second, and then he sinks down again until the muscles of his throat flutter and flex to make way for Scott.

And Scott tosses his head back to bare his own throat, because this is submission, submission, submission; he’d rip out his soul and give it to Isaac right now if he could. He’s babbling “Isaac, Isaac – I’m gonna –” and Isaac just _snarls_ and holds him down and _goes_ _for it_ , and Scott loses his shit entirely – done; end of story; hasta la vista, baby.

When he blinks and groans and shudders to life again, Isaac is still kneeling over him, grinning wide and sharp and feral. The spikes of his armor gleam in the thin moonlight filtering through the walls of the tent. _Wild thing_.

He has to ask: “How are you even real?”

Isaac arches his eyebrows. “How are you still alive?”

“I don’t know,” Scott admits.

“Neither do I.” Isaac leans down and kisses him again, lets Scott taste the salt and bitterness on his tongue. “Go to sleep,” he orders. No mention of how hard he must be; no demand for reciprocation. He sets a hand on Scott’s chest when he goes to sit up – shoves him down, starts backing away. “See you in the morning.”

“Where are you going?”

Isaac just smiles his broken smile. “Out.”

***

One of the first things Isaac tells Scott is not to humanize him. He is – as Scott is so frequently reminded – an ex-Fiend, an ex-fighter, an ex-junkie, ex-sane in too many ways.

Scott can count the number of times he’s seen Isaac out of his armor on one hand, but it’s always the first one which comes to mind: the first time he ever saw Isaac, period: lying on a bloody cot in Melissa McCall’s tent in the Followers of the Apocalypse outpost in Freeside, a few days after his encounter with the deathclaw. Pumped full of Stimpaks and chems, his flesh had knit itself back together, albeit with ferocious scarring, but by that point they knew he would survive. But he’d still been so weak, surrounded by the battered, broken, and dying, and it had seemed so very, very possible that he would drop back into the sewer fighting pits as soon as he could walk again.

They heard the stories from Mick and Ralph, from patrons of the Atomic Wrangler, from the Kings: everyone knew the Fiend who fought with an unlit Shishkebab. (“Too many years under Cook-Cook’ll put you off a couple things, like fire, and Brahmin.”) The deathclaw was only part of the tale of the boy who fell in with the chem-loving Fiends by the time he was sixteen.

Once Isaac was functional enough to walk and eye the fighting pits again, Scott had a conversation with him about trekking across the Mojave, about not going back to the sewers, about – maybe, maybe, _maybe_ – changing the world. And Isaac, buckling on an amalgamation of leather and metal, studied him in silence for a terrifyingly long moment before he said yes.

Two days later, they left Freeside with a whipcord ex-Fiend loping along in front of them.

Ex-Fiend – “ex-human” is what the Freesiders call him.

A NCR officer at McCarren tries to sum it up for them: “A Fiend ain’t ever gonna stop being a Fiend – they’ll always be addicted to something. The kid might not be mainlining Jet anymore, but that doesn’t make him human. He’s always going to want to kill something.”

“Good thing we’ve got plenty of people for him to kill, then,” Stiles says, and Scott is grateful.

Isaac’s off-kilter at best, and a reaving lunatic when in the worst throes of his bloodlust, but there is never a moment when it seems he might turn on them. It’s the difference between a Great Kahn and a… well, a Fiend. And if he’s got an addiction nowadays, it’s calling the shots with Scott.

On that score: it’s not Isaac blowing Scott that matters; it’s the fact that he pins Scott to the bed, to the wall, to the _ground_ if he feels like it, and stays in control the whole time he’s sucking him down. Isaac kisses Scott, curls around him, skims fingertips over his scars as he pleases, and puts off the sort of half-manic, half-dignified aura that makes Scott understand he’s allowed to react and reciprocate, but not initiate. Not in the same way. Isaac doesn’t mind if Scott claps a hand on his shoulder, and he follows all instructions as best he can, even in the thick of a fight, but Scott doesn’t kid himself by thinking that gives him the right to skim a palm, unprovoked, down the line of Isaac’s spine – that’s not his place.

On a trip to Jacobstown, they shelter for the night on the edge of the forest, and Scott reflects on all of this as he’s sitting watch with his back to the fire. It’s as cold as it gets in the wasteland: there are patches of snow on the ground, and a damp wind cuts through his layers of leather and cloth.

When he goes to wake Derek so he can take his turn, the sniper is curled around Stiles, so very similar to Isaac that Scott stands and stares until Derek’s hyper-senses have his eyes flicking open to glare. He sits up without protest comment, even as Stiles groans to protest the loss of warmth, and resettles their shared blanket so it helps fill the void left by his body. Derek’s gaze, locked on Scott’s the whole time, is a standing challenge.

Scott scarcely dares to breathe as he backs away. He doesn’t even look up when he kneels beside Isaac, because Derek’s idea was a good one, okay; it’s cold, and it’s not as if they haven’t done this before.

Isaac snaps awake as soon as Scott touches a knuckle to his shoulder. He stares up, blankly alert, before the gears click and he nods at the smooth patch of ground between them. “C’mon.”

Scott hauls his pack over to use as a pillow and settles himself down even as Isaac drags their blankets over one another and curls around him, hand on the sternum, nose tucked against the dip of his skull. His breath ruffles Scott’s hair as he drops off to sleep again almost immediately.

***

People don’t comment on them. On Isaac – on the ex-Fiend – yes, but not on _them_. That’s not exactly surprising – past the end of the world, who cares? What does rebuilding the species matter when there’s nothing for a child to look forward to but gritty dirt and radiation poisoning and monsters crawling out from behind every hill and hole? At least Fiends aren’t ghouls, and ghouls are better than Mutes, and even Mutes have some speck of humanity left in them – were once human, maybe, so they’re a step up from the robots some people like to fuck.

***

They end up back in New Vegas, trying to pacify Peter’s suspicions about Stiles. Derek blusters and spits half-threats when he learns Peter wants to meet Stiles alone, but he can’t insist on anything with two laser blasters leveled at his chest and all exits blocked.

The Securitrons are just as wary as their master, though they do concede that Stiles can be armed – “not that it will make a difference, should he show his true colors,” the dicks.

Stiles ignores them. “I’ll be up in a few hours,” he promises, directing them towards the elevators. “Go.” He doesn’t flinch when Derek leans in to grip the side of his neck, shaking him once; they hold each other’s gaze for a moment, then Derek nods, stepping away with his chin tucked down against his chest.

The spikes on Isaac’s armor dig into Scott’s shoulder when he shuffles closer, but they stay in contact for their entire Securitron-chauffeured elevator ride up to the presidential suite.

Once up there, there’s little to do but wait. Lydia and Danny – who have never been here before – prowl a nervous round of the rooms before settling in the lounge area, while Derek starts the first of many anxious laps paced around the suite. Scott, resigned to a long wait, badgers Lydia into playing Caravan with him with the argument that anything is better than just staring at the walls. By their third round, Danny has drifted over to watch, and Isaac is sitting beside Scott on the floor while the cards slap down on the coffee table at a steady rate. Derek ignores them.

They only bet ten caps per round, but after eight rounds Lydia is sixty caps richer. “Caravan owner,” she reminds them, smirking.

As they’re prepping for game nine, Danny asks if he can play, so Scott hands over his deck and tries to explain the particular strategy his was designed for. They declare a non-betting round, which is good, because Lydia doesn’t even pretend to be nice; she wipes the floor with Danny. He does only marginally better the next time around, completing one caravan before she steals the show.

Five more games (still non-betting, because Scott is not about to let Danny gamble away everything he has) and Lydia is complaining about how she should at least be getting something for her boredom, but then almost loses because she stops paying attention. She cleans up the next round and demands a bet if they’re going to continue.

Danny sits back, shaking his head. “No way, dude.” He looks to Isaac. “You ever played this?” When Isaac crooks a smile and pulls his own deck from some pocket of his armor, Danny hands Scott back his cards and scoots away, down to the end of the table.

Lydia takes one look at Isaac’s expression, then beckons to Scott to take her spot. “You first.”

That was probably a wise choice: Isaac wins after playing less than a dozen cards. Scott throws up his hands until Lydia elbows him out of the way.

She does…better. Their first round lasts until she runs out of cards, and the same thing happens to Isaac for the next two before he wins cleanly in the fourth.

“Goddamn, Fiend,” Danny mutters, and Isaac’s lips roll back from his teeth:

“Did you think fighting was the only way to make money in The Thorn?”

“I’ve never been; I wouldn’t know,” Danny says.

Isaac studies him a moment, expression amused, then starts picking out cards for a new round. “Whatever you say, Boomer.” He wins the next game, too, and then the elevator dings, releasing Stiles.

There are lines in his face now that weren’t there a year ago, before he got shot in the head, and his shoulders are bowed with all the weight on them. His voice is hoarse when he walks in, and he leans on Scott when he wraps him up in a hug. But he’s alive, with no Securitrons busting through the door. The world has yet to end a second time.

“So… we’re okay?” Lydia asks.

“Yeah,” Stiles mumbles into Scott’s shoulder. “We’re okay,” and Scott squeezes him tighter.

They split off to their rooms after that, because it’s late, and they’re exhausted after hours of too-tight nerves. Stiles tells them to sleep in – this is the best rest they’ll see in the Mojave, here in the den of the enemy. It’s a risk to set foot in New Vegas - but they’re okay here for the time being. Peter believes them. They’ll be alright.

For his part, Scott faceplants shirtless onto his bed within seconds of stumbling into the room, nestling into the pillows. He contemplates surgically fusing himself with the mattress and never leaving, because it’s the softest thing he’s ever felt, he’s sure, and, shit, he’s _tired_.

The door reopens, then clicks shut.

He grunts into the pillow: “Isaac?”

“I could have killed you by now. You’d never have known.” Scott groans, rolling his head to the side. Isaac is running his thumb over the handle of the door, but he lets go to step over to the bedside when he catches Scott’s gaze. “You’re careless.”

“You weren’t gonna kill me.” He watches Isaac unbuckle leather and metal plates, dropping them to the ground one-by-one – which is standard – and then tug the loose, lightweight shirt he wears underneath over his head – which isn’t. There is suddenly a lot of Isaac to look at. Scott blinks.

“I could have, if I wanted to,” Isaac says, and it takes Scott a minute to tie that statement in to the rest of the conversation. Isaac climbs onto the bed, over Scott – leans down to bite, just once, at the back of his neck – and drops down on the far side of the mattress, while Scott twists his head around to watch him.

The bed’s too narrow for them both to lie flat, so Isaac’s on his side, facing Scott, expression forcibly blank. This is the first time Scott’s seen him shirtless since that first time in the Followers’ camp. The scars from the deathclaw start high on the left side of Isaac’s ribcage, stretching down and over across his stomach with only mottled skin where his navel should be. The swipe ends along the line of his right hipbone. _Chems fixed up all the muscle and bone, but they left him without a friggin’ belly-button_ , Scott thinks, and wonders why he finds that so funny. The rest of Isaac’s torso is a mess of white lines and raises ridges of scar tissue – severe wounds that healed on their own time – with the occasional pale circles of bullet holes. None of that is funny. They don’t put humans up against one another in The Thorn.

It’s not that Scott doesn’t have scars of his own, but Isaac looks like he should be dead about twenty times over. Even the arm that he oh-so-casually drapes over Scott’s back has had at least one bite taken out of it and healed via chems.

“I can hear you thinking,” Isaac mutters. “Stop it.”

“Why’re you the one asking how I’m alive? What kind of shitty-”

“I said stop it.” And Isaac kisses Scott, not like a Fiend, not like a feral monster, but like a human: soft and warm and barely bothering to move away after. “Go to sleep.”

“You gonna let those Securitrons in to kill me while I’m out?” Scott asks, eyes already half-closed.

“I wouldn’t be much of a Fiend if I let that happen,” Isaac says, and smiles. Broken.

***

“How does a Fiend wind up with a Shishkebab, anyway?” Mick lays the weapon out on his workbench, running his thumb along the pitted blade. “Not exactly standard gear.”

Isaac stands with arms folded across his chest as he studies Mick’s movements. “Big damn hero of a bounty hunter tried to one-up Cook-cook by fighting fire with fire. We took her down before she even got close. Cook-cook only wanted the fuel tanks; the blade was shit. Took ages to make it anything – still has a long way to go.”

Mick grunts. “Made a decent job of it. You kill many people with this?”

“Like that’s even a question.”

“How ‘bout raping? Fiends are fond of that, I hear.”

Isaac shifts his weight, and Scott tenses. “That wasn’t my turf.”

“Really.”

“That’s not to say I didn’t see plenty, or didn’t know exactly what happened to anyone we didn’t kill, but that was…” Isaac shrugs. “I was in it for the killing.”

Mick nods, thoughtful, rotating the Shishkebab around and bending lower over the workbench. “The best – and I use that term loosely, but still, the best Fiends all get a kick from something more than chems. Violet’s was cannibalism, Cook-cook goes out for raping, and even Nephi’s got a hard-on for bashing in skulls with that golf club… You made it six years with them, and four more in the pits. That ain’t normal. So what gets you?”

“I would have gotten along with Nephi, if he didn’t have that habit of using followers as shields. Cook-cook’s pack lived longest, so long as they listened.” Isaac’s broken smile comes out. “I just like killing.”

***

They’re on their way down to visit the Great Kahns when Isaac casually slams an elbow into Stiles’ stomach, doubling him over as a bullet zips through the air where his head had been. Another shot cracks next to Scott’s ear as they scatter to take cover.

Scott winds up flattened against a ruined wall next to Lydia, who is white-faced and somewhere between terrified and furious. “If your fuckin’ Fiend tipped them off-” she slams a cartridge into her submachine gun (her shoulder-mounted one is packed away in pieces) and hefts it “-I’m gonna blow his head off.”

Isaac laughs somewhere nearby, and she stiffens. “Nephi! Still kicking, motherfucker?”

“Wrong Fiend, boy. You’re slack. I get a feeling Cook-cook’s gonna be pissed I caved your fucking skull in before he did though – man holds a grudge.” A woman’s voice from high above them, sharp and raving. “C’mon, pretties – come out for your playdate!”

Scott furrows his brow. _What’s going on?_ he mouths to Lydia.

“The turf’s changed,” she hisses. “Driver Nephi’s dead or gone or moved. That’s Violet – the cannibal bitch with the hounds – out there now.” A pack of Fiends bristling with spikes and rabid fury rounds the corner as she finishes speaking. One, hearing her, lunges at Lydia with a hatchet. She twitches her trigger finger, spitting out a trio of bullets, and he drops.

The rest of the Friends scatter to come at them from multiple angles. They’re all armed with melee weapons – from pool cues to one woman with a revving chainsaw – so Scott goes back-to-back with Lydia to pump them full of holes before they get close. There are more hiding in the ruins – Fiends with guns and energy weapons sniping down, missing by inches, sometimes hitting their own. He can hear Derek snapping for Stiles to get behind him, behind Danny, get down – pick them off the walls, Danny.

Isaac is silent. An unknown quantity. _Your Fiend_ , Lydia had called him, and Scott wonders if he’s been wrong all along. He has a second’s terrified thought that Isaac might be one of the bodies they’re piling up – Fiends drop fast, so fast; they don’t stop coming until they’re dead, and there are so many, they overwhelm, but if you hit the right spot they’re done for in an instant – but he’s never seen Isaac wear a helmet; that’s the only thing distinguishing him from these chem-hounds, and Scott’s never stopped ragging on him for neglecting safety on that most basic of levels, but he’s glad now, so glad; Isaac can’t be any of these, can’t be _mustn’t_ be.

He rips out his combat knife and ducks in under the last Fiend’s guard, looks up to see bright blue eyes glaring down even as he stabs the blade through their jugular. Blood fountains. Something slams into the side of his head, and he staggers back and away from the dying – dead – Fiend, ears ringing. _Isaac, Isaac – that was_ -

A rifle shot cracks against the wall next to his arm. He ducks. The Fiend is a woman, dark-skinned but with empty, bright blue eyes that stare up at the sky.

“Move, idiot!” Lydia butts him with her shoulder. Crouched over with her submachine gun at the ready, she leads the way back along the path that the Fiends took, deeper into the South Vegas ruins.

Scott trots along after her, hears a rustle, jumps back just in time to avoid being landed on when another Fiend comes down off the wall – a woman with near-black skin.

Lydia spins, breathes out a stunned “Violet” and goes to her knees when the Fiend leader pistol-whips her with the butt of a hunting rifle. At the same moment, a crushing force plows into Scott’s hip. His armor dulls the blow enough to save his bones, but he still crashes to the ground, gasping in pain, vision whiting out.

“Been a while, pretty girlie.” He can hear Violet talking, and under it the baying of her swarming hounds. “How long did we say I needed to roast your heart?”

“Fuck you.”

Scott blinks. A hollow-eyed white face is gazing serenely down at him. The Fiend licks his lips and prods at Scott with his rebar club, and the howling is getting closer.

“Now, now, girlie, that’s not nice.”

“We’re working with the Kahns, you bitch,” Lydia rasps. “You’ll never see a hit of Psycho again.”

Violet hawks up a wad of brown saliva and spits onto Lydia’s cheek. “I don’t believe you, girlie. Now who’s this lost lamb here?” She turns, leering, to Scott. “Let’s see what your heart tastes like.” She levels the rifle, and the head of the Fiend who took him down explodes.

Shoving himself into a sitting position, Scott gropes for his knife as Violet snarls an obscenity; she scales back up the wall in the time it takes Lydia to scramble to her feet.

The hounds wheel around the corner, eight or nine of them, all making a beeline for the two figures on the ground. A grenade blast in their midst gives them pause – enough for Lydia to snatch up her submachine and open fire. Those who don’t die turn tail.

Hands grab Scott under the arms, haul him upright even as he staggers and winces. “Hip, hip, hip-”

Stiles punches the needle of a Stimpak into Scott’s arm, compresses the syringe as Scott pants, supported only by him and Danny. His expression is grim. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here.”

“Fuck that,” Lydia snarls. “I have a Fiend to kill.”

Scott squeezes his eyes shut. “Isaac. Where’s Isaac?”

He feels Danny shrug. “We don’t know; we haven’t-”

“ _First Recon,_ ” Violet shrills. “ _Fuckin’ sniper_. I’ll fuckin’ bleed you _dry_ , meat.”

“Lydia, _no._ ”

When Scott reopens his eyes, she’s already up the wall, balanced precariously on the ruined edge. She smirks down at them, slams a new cartridge home. “Be with you in a minute, boys.”

Grunting, Scott shifts his weight off Stiles and Danny while the former curses (“She was just pistol-whipped, goddamn; she should have a fucking concussion…” and the latter readies his grenade launcher. His hip twinges, then recovers as the Stimpak finishes its work. “I gotta go guys. Be back… in a minute.”

“If you die for that Fiend, I’m going to kill you,” Stiles says.

“Don’t worry. He’d kill me first.” And Scott jogs away from them, following Lydia on the ground. His heart is racing in his ears, matched by Lydia’s panting breaths above him as she scrambles to keep her balance, to catch up with Violet. They hit an open space in the ruins, and Scott freezes, because all he can see is blood and a writhing mess of Fiends under a blue sky, and he _is_ going to die.

Violet screams, “ _More meat_!”

The Fiends don’t seem to notice her – they have bigger problems. Derek’s up on the side of another building, only the barrel of his rifle visible, but he’s picking off any who stay still for too long. And either there is suddenly major infighting amongst Violet’s followers, or else-

Two and a half feet of red metal burst from the back of one Fiend, and then there is Isaac in the middle of them all, helmetless as ever and bleeding all over.

He’s grinning.

Is it even his blood?

Scott grabs for his knife without thinking and plunges into the thick of it without even thinking. He killing, killing more than he’s ever killed in his life, just slamming the blade home every chance he gets into necks and spines and shoulders and stomachs; half the time they’re not even looking at him, too distracted – they’re so _easy_ to kill. And they go down silent, without ceremony, probably barely feeling it with all the Jet and Psycho in their veins, but dying all the same, from him, from Isaac, from Derek – from _Lydia_ , because Violet gurgles and howls and makes a martyr’s picture as the submachine gun’s blast topples her off the wall, as another Fiend dies in Scott’s grip.

There is blood everywhere, bits of bone and flesh, and more coming every second.

It’s all killing, killing, killing, until he whips around once more and his blade skids off the armor of the last Fiend standing, because it’s Isaac, hauling him in, blood all over everything and god only knows how many infections waiting to happen, and Scott is probably still coated in brains from the one with the rebar club, but Isaac’s kissing him in the middle of the carnage like the big damn drama queen he is, caught up in the killing, in the rush. And Scott lets this be stupid and dramatic because “I thought you were dead, you asshole – they all thought you’d tipped them off – what the fuck happened to staying in sight? – what the fuck?” growled against Isaac’s mouth, the curve of his neck. _God, fuck_.

Isaac grabs his skull in one hand, presses their foreheads together. “You’re an idiot.”

“So are you,” Scott points out, panting.

“It’s gonna get you killed someday.”

“Not on your watch,” he says, and grins.

Isaac raises his eyebrows. “ _I’ll_ fuckin’ kill you, then.”

Scott opens his mouth to reply, but Derek is yelling for them: “Scott! C’mon! Grab your Fiend and let’s go before more turn up!”

“That’s a viable concern,” Isaac notes, taking his hands off Scott and backing away to pick up his blade. He’s smiling when he straightens up – but it’s the broken one, again, and Scott doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than the kill-frenzy grin from before.

They’ve reconvened with the group again before his brain processes what Derek said. Not ‘Isaac’. ‘Your Fiend’ – same as Lydia.

_Your Fiend._

 ***

“Your Fiend.” It isn’t an endearment or a kindness. It’s dehumanization plus one, because Fiends are already less than human, and making Isaac out to be some piece of property isn’t exactly a positive connotation.

The first time Isaac hears Scott chastising someone for that – because it’s not just Derek and Lydia; it’s people everywhere they go, now; he’s somehow stopped being the ex-Fiend, and become the Fiend on a leash – he slaps him across the back of the head, and the Mojave Outpost barroom goes silent. “I spent six years under Cook-cook,” he says. “I think I’ll survive being called a Fiend. Practically a compliment, if you think about it. Can’t be that many non-junkie Fiends roaming the waste.” And he grins.

“Cook-cook,” a caravan guard mutters. “NCR should have nailed your ass the first chance they got.”

Isaac straightens up off the bar. “Think so? Alright. Come get me.” He holds out empty hands and meets the guard stare for stare.

Stiles snorts into a glass of whiskey. “Sit your ass back down and drink, Isaac.”

“In a minute. I’m waiting for this guy.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the guard says. He looks away from them.

“I’ve tried that. It’s… interesting.”

“Freak.”

“Nope.” Isaac sits down again, picks up his glass. “Fiend.”

 ***

Isaac has his weight settled across Scott’s hips, is hunched over, kissing him. They’re both shirtless, here alone in the Boomers’ guest barracks. Tomorrow morning they’re leaving to get the B-29 off the bottom of Lake Mead. This is the last ‘alone time’ they’ll have for days – maybe longer. Things are coming to a head with the NCR, while the Legion gains strength and Peter Hale grows ever more wary. The tension can’t get much thicker before something breaks.

Scott cards loose fingers through Isaac’s hair, putting a little distance between their faces. “Hey.”

Isaac twitches an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Gotta question.”

“About?”

“Us.”

Isaac sighs, sits back. “And here I was hoping for uncomplicated. Shoot.”

“You always… being on top – is it a…” He doesn’t want to say Fiend, because he’s heard enough about Fiends being monsters and demons and oh here’s a couple hundred caps for taking down Violet – he’s had enough of that for a couple years, thanks.

Isaac doesn’t seem to share his opinion on the matter: “It’s a power thing. A Fiends-are-lifetime-addicts thing.”

“What happened to killing?”

“This is different.”

“But you never let yourself – you know. How is that…?”

Leaning down, Isaac bites gently at Scott’s throat, shutting him up. “That’s a control thing,” he murmurs. “An I’m-not-dumb-enough-to-trust-myself-even-if-you-do thing. Distinct from the power thing.” He slides back, knuckles drifting down Scott’s belly, fingers slipping under the waistband of his boxers, wrapping around him and pulling him out. Scott’s hard – of course he’s hard; it’s _Isaac_.

“Give me a reason not to trust you,” he grits out. Isaac’s jacking him slowly, too loose and easy to really be going anywhere, just trying to make him stop talking. “One reason. C’mon.”

“You should never trust a Fiend. Ask anyone.” Isaac’s grip tightens, twisting on the upstroke, dry palm rasping.

Scott’s chest is tight; he can barely breathe, too caught up in watching Isaac’s face: the set of his jaw, the teeth sunk into his lower lip. “You really think you’re gonna hurt me?”

“Fiend,” Isaac reminds him. “Stop talking.” It’s an order.

So Scott complies, and keeps his mouth shut as he shifts his thigh up so that Isaac’s riding the line of it, doesn’t speak when Isaac throws his head back, hissing, and has a spastic moment of reflexively grinding down while trying not to.

“Idiot,” Isaac rasps, almost a full minute later.

Scott hitches his leg up further, until Isaac ruts down against his hip, face flushing, and Scott tugs him down while Isaac’s free hand fists in his hair, and they’re kissing, Isaac biting at his mouth, the corners and lines of their bodies jabbing and tangled up in one another. And Scott knows enough to keep rocking his thigh up against Isaac, even when Isaac’s not kissing him anymore, has his face pressed into Scott’s shoulder, teeth scraping over his collarbone – whimpering softly, Scott realizes, because Isaac’s rolling his hips into it now, finding a rhythm; his hand is still working between them even as he shudders against Scott, and Scott bucks up into him. “C’mon, c’mon.”

“Don’t fuckin’ – I’m, I’m…”

“C’mon, Isaac.”

Isaac groans like all the air’s been punched out of him. His teeth sink into the muscle of Scott’s shoulder with enough force to break skin – _fuck_ – before he’s rearing away, gasping, eyes shocky and wide. They still, panting, staring at each other, until Isaac lunges in again. He kisses Scott, lets him lick the blood – Scott’s blood – off his teeth, before rolling up and back and knocking Scott’s legs apart to settle between them. He splays his fingers wide over the inside of Scott’s thighs, licks a stripe up the length of him, then bobs his head down.

It takes Scott about five seconds to come with the muscles of Isaac’s throat clenching around him; he arches his back, sucking air, breath locked up inside his lungs, and bucks against the hands that hold him down as Isaac works him over.

When Isaac sits up again, he’s still flushed, mouth red and wrecked, muscles lax. “You have terrible judgment.”

Scott huffs. “Sure I do.”

“Really, really, godawful judgment. I mean it.” Isaac cocks his head to the side, eyes flicking down to Scott’s shoulder. “How you gonna explain that to a medic?”

“It’s fine,” Scott says. “It’s barely even bleeding. That can’t be the first time someone’s been bitten during sex.”

Isaac snorts. “That barely counted as sex, even with a-”

“Whatever that was, it wasn’t with a Fiend. It was with you.”

“Stupid boy.” Isaac’s mouth twists. He drapes himself over Scott, forearms framing his head. “I am a Fiend. And you’re an idiot for fuckin’ around with one.” He kisses him.

Scott hums against his mouth, head tilting back. “Do you just like being called that?”

“I am what I am. It’s a fact; I don’t mind it. Gives me a base, you know? Like NCR or Legion.” Isaac ducks his chin to run his nose along the line of Scott’s jaw.

“You’re not a Fiend anymore though.”

“And you’re not a courier, but you still introduce yourself that way, because otherwise you wouldn’t know what to call yourself. I’d rather be a Fiend than a mercenary. At least this way, people don’t think they can buy me.” Isaac presses his face into Scott’s throat, shifting his weight off to lie on his stomach next to him, one arm still thrown over Scott’s chest. “If I’m a Fiend, I get to pick what I’m fighting for.”

“So you went with the guys who keep almost getting killed?” Scott laughs, still stuck on his giddy high.

Isaac sighs and waits until he’s quiet to drop his bombshell: “I went with the idiot who keeps insisting that I’m human.” He knocks his forehead against Scott’s. “You’re wrong, by the way, but nice try. Somebody’s gotta be keeping watch for the sunrise after the apocalypse.” He pauses, traces a finger around the bite mark. “You would be the one who didn’t go under, and just sat out, watching, while the rest of us hid. Even Stiles would’ve stayed down until it was safe – but not you, Scott, never you.” He looks up, grin soft, teasing. “Fuckin’ idiot.”

Scott doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he’s glad when Isaac curls a hand into his hair and kisses him again, because he still feels dopey and happy, and he thinks, once he figures out the full meaning behind what Isaac just said, he’s going to want to take on Peter Hale and the Legion and all the remaining Fiends singlehandedly for him. And even Scott’s not quite dumb enough to categorize that as a good idea.


End file.
